Patrick Dunn, On 21/07/2011 16:52:
> It is simply impossible to assign an iconic symbol to an abstract idea such
> as emotion.
Surely symbols that are at least translucent should be possible, e.g. for anxiety versus serenity, sorrow versus joy, drawing on metaphorical connections with balance/imbalance, up/down (the physical feeling of being lifted up and pulled down by emotions), facial expressions, and so forth. And if all such translucent symbols for emotions included an 'emotion' classifier element, then the bare classifier could stand for the generic concept 'emotion', which taken in isolation wouldn't be iconic, but which would nevertheless have a kind of 'paradigmatic motivatedness' (is there a technical term for that?).
This would just be a graphical counterpart of the sort of phonaesthetic iconicity found in most lgs.
--And.